As part of an expanded programme of Paris-Photo (and a little ahead of its official opening on 6 November), the BnF is honoring Denis Brihat, an essential figure in the history of photography in France. Over the years, Denis Brihat has developed his visual research axis: the careful study of nature and more particularly the plant world. In particular, he sees his garden, which he cultivates with passion, as a metaphor for the world. Nourished with philosophy and literature, the artist is fascinated by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He transposes the musical system of the counterpoint in order to create, from the same motif - a vegetable, a flower, a tree etc. - a musical system. -a real polyphony. A great admirer of Edward Weston, close to American photographers Aaron Siskind, Paul Caponigro and Irving Penn, Denis Brihat photographs as closely as possible to his subject of study - lichens, onions, poppies. Abstraction and fragment form the basis of his visual syntax. The transition from microcosm to macrocosm is as important to him as the transition from black and white to colour. An "alchemist" photographer, Denis Brihat has developed, over a 70-year career, an extraordinarily sensitive work. Promoter of "creative" photography and tireless actor in the transmission of film know-how, he is also one of the founders of the Rencontres d'Arles. He has just donated to the BnF about a hundred emblematic pieces, exceptionally presented this autumn.